


The Last Saskatchewan Gentleman

by cjmarlowe



Category: Corner Gas
Genre: F/M, Gen, Tall Tales, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-13 02:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjmarlowe/pseuds/cjmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hank and Wanda take shelter from a storm. Possibly. Depending on who you ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Saskatchewan Gentleman

"So it was Wanda, in the pickup, with a hairbrush," says Brent. "Huh, my money was on Lacey, in the Ruby, with a skillet. I'm terrible at this game."

"Lacey?" says Hank. "It wasn't even Lacey's car I found out in the storm last night."

"Two nights ago."

"What?"

"The storm was two nights ago. And I didn't know it wasn't Lacey's car until you told me."

"And how would it be in the Ruby if I was stuck in a storm?"

"Never mind," says Brent, brushing sidewalk sand off his countertop.

"Well, whatever. Does Lacey even have a car?"

"Of course Lacey has a... wait, _does_ Lacey have a car? If she does, she's going somewhere else to get her gas."

Hank leans in across the counter. "She's not one of us, Brent."

* * *

_Twelve hours earlier, possibly thirty-six, or not at all depending on who you ask_

So there Hank was, heading down the road, whistling in perfect tune along with the radio and navigating the snowstorm with an ease born of a lifetime of Prairie winters--

~~~

"See, that's where you lose me," says Brent. "You're just not that good of a driver."

"How can I lose you already? I haven't even started the story yet."

"You did take a blow to the head," says Brent. "That's some lump you got there. Maybe you aren't telling it right. Maybe you're telling someone _else's_ story. Like Chuck Norris, or the Littlest Hobo."

"The Littlest Hobo can't drive, Brent," scoffs Hank. "Everyone knows that."

~~~

\--navigating the snowstorm with an ease born of a lifetime of Prairie winters, when suddenly, through the near-whiteout, he spotted something at the side of the road. Being the good samaritan he was, despite the raging storm he immediately pulled over to assist--

~~~

"No seriously Hank, tell it right or I'll be forced to make up my own story. Actually, never mind, I'm doing that already."

Brent's story involves a flying ballpeen hammer, a squirrel and an inexplicable oil slick and is, in fact, only slightly more plausible than Hank's. But at least it gets around to explaining the lump on the back of Hank's head before dinnertime.

"All right, fine," says Hank.

~~~

\--and since the storm nearly made him veer off the road anyway, he stopped to find out who else had gotten stuck in it, mostly because misery loved company, and maybe because it was possible the other car didn't have a broken heater.

The snow was already nearly at his knees when he forced open the door and dropped out of the truck, and icy pellets whipped into the side of his face with a force usually reserved for dodgeballs and stray hockey pucks. No one in his right mind would be out in it, something no one had ever accused Hank of.

The car looked vaguely familiar - what he could make out through the snow, anyway - but it wasn't until he pressed his face up against the driver's side window that he saw who it was. The window unrolled down his red and frozen cheek.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Uh, rescuing you?"

"Do I _look_ like I need rescuing, like some damsel in distress?"

Hank was momentarily flustered. "Well, your car's on the side of the road. Stopped. In a snowstorm," he said. It seemed like the textbook definition of 'in distress', even though it didn't involve evil plots or fire-breathing dragons. Which weren't even in the textbook anyway. More like the comic book.

"All right fine, I need rescuing," said Wanda. "Do you have a snowplow?"

"I've got my truck?"

"Good enough," said Wanda, grabbing her purse and zipping up her coat. "Out of my way, I'm coming out." Hank stumbled back away from the door before it opened into him. "What, are you just going to stand there?" she said, slamming it shut again. A chunk of ice fell off and landed in the snow. "Lead me to your truck."

"It's right over--" Hank was staring at a sheer white wall. "It's in that direction."

~~~

"Wait, you lost your truck in the storm?" says Brent. "Well, at least it's better than losing it in mall parking."

"I only did that _one_ time."

"Yeah, one time a _year_ , which is exactly how often you go into the city."

"Besides, I didn't lose my truck in the storm, I knew exactly where it was."

~~~

"My fingers are numb and I can't see my car anymore," said Wanda. "If I die out here, I'm leaving you my kid."

"Nobody's going to die out here," said Hank. "My truck's right here. Right on the other side of this snowbank."

It would probably have been more convincing if he hadn't said that three times already, but it wasn't his fault there was so much wind that it was changing everything around.

"Hank, you're leading us into the wilderness. Years from now they're going to find our bodies in someone's field, picked clean by scavengers, and wonder whose stupid sense of direction got us there."

"It'd never take them years to find our bodies," said Hank. "They'd get caught in the tiller in the spring. They'd probably even still be able to identify us."

"Well you're a comfort."

"And hey, I'm not leading us in to the wilderness, the truck's right--" Hank slammed into the tailgate and knocked himself back into the snow.

"Well, what do you know?" said Wanda, leaving him there and feeling her way around the vehicle to climb in the passenger side, pushing a pair of work gloves, two screwdrivers and a copy of the 1987 Farmers' Almanac out of the way.

Hank, after pulling himself out of a snowbank, shook the snow from his parka and climbed back in his truck. And sat there, looking in dismay at the world outside his windshield.

"Some rescue," said Wanda after a few moments, staring where Hank was staring. "Do you need me to talk you through this? Put the key in the ignition--"

"Do _you_ see the road?" Hank interrupted her.

"Sure I can... no," said Wanda.

"Well, that's a problem," said Hank.

~~~

"And that's how you got the lump on the back of your head, falling in a snowbank?"

"What? No, that came later."

"Wow, this is almost like Clue. Wait, is this why you never made it to my mom's festive dinner?"

"Your mom had a festive dinner?"

"Oh right, you weren't invited. Never mind, carry on."

"Wait, why wasn't I invited to your mom's festive dinner?" says Hank. "I like your mom's festive dinners."

"Yeah," chuckles Brent. "Remember last year, when you accidentally tripped over the tree skirt and sent the mashed potatoes flying through the doors of the china cabinet."

"Yeah," says Hank, grinning fondly at the memory.

"That's why you weren't invited to Mom's festive dinner."

~~~

"We're just going to have to wait it out," said Hank, "or we're going to end up running into someone's tractor or something."

"That's what you're worried about?" said Wanda, turning in her seat to stare at him instead of the snow. "We're trapped together in the middle of a snowstorm and you're worried about running into a tractor?"

"It could happen!" said Hank. "There's got to be at least one tractor parked in a field along this road, and in a blizzard we wouldn't be able to see it."

"Technically," said Wanda, "this isn't a blizzard. The definition of blizzard rests on four criteria: temperature, snowfall, wind speed and duration. Now we've got the wind and we've got the snowfall, and it feels like we've got the cold, but it hasn't been going on long enough to qualify as a bona fide blizzard.

"Wow," said Hank. "You're really overthinking this."

"Yes, well, that's what I do when I'm in danger of freezing to death three miles from home. Vamoose, young Hank. Or at the very least turn the truck _on_."

"Oh right," said Hank. "See, I could do that, but the heat's broken."

"The what is what?"

"The heat," said Hank, not quite daring to look at her. "It's broken. I'd just end up sucking in cold air from outside. I guess we could go back to your car?"

"If we could _find_ my car," said Wanda, waiting a few sullen moments before adding, "Plus, the engine stalled."

"Oh, so that's why you were stopped at the side of the road," said Hank.

"No, I just stopped for kicks," said Wanda. "You know what? How about we take our chances with the tractors and the barbed-wire fences. We're not that far from town."

~~~

"She said she needed to get back into town to go to Bingo," explains Hank.

"Wanda doesn't play Bingo," says Brent. "She probably needed to get back to rescue her babysitter."

"I wonder why she was in such a hurry, then?"

"Liability issues," says Brent wisely. "Oh, and you had _no heat_."

"Right," says Hank.

~~~

An awkward silence lingered for a good five hours before Hank dared to say anything else. Or maybe it was fifteen minutes that _felt_ like five hours. He was pretty sure Wanda's anger was going to keep her warm enough for a little while anyway.

"You know, I've got this really big warm coat...." he started.

"Don't," snapped Wanda, pointing a finger at him without even needing to look. "Do not suggest what I think you're about to suggest."

"I was just thinking that--"

"If the words 'body heat' are about to come out of your mouth, I don't want to hear them."

"It's not like I'm going to get naked--"

"Oh God, you said it," said Wanda, "and that's not the sort of thing you can take back."

Hank pulled the long, fur-lined coat from behind the bench seat. "I was thinking we could use this for a blanket," he said.

"Oh," said Wanda. "Well, I guess that would be all right. But no touching!"

But after Hank spread the coat out over them, it wasn't long before Wanda, even in her winter jacket, was pressed closer to his side.

~~~

"Wait, are you sure that was Wanda and not the guy who sits out in front of the Co-op in a parka in July? It's an easy mistake to make."

"Right," scoffs Hank. "He's at least a foot taller."

"Because _that's_ the biggest difference between them," says Brent. "So are you saying Wanda cuddled you?"

"You didn't hear it from me," Hank says quickly. "I didn't say anything about it. You just, uh, heard it through the snowvine."

"Don't you mean the grapevine?"

"Do _you_ see any grapes around here?"

"Right," says Brent. "I must've forgotten that snow comes on vines now. Makes it much easier to clean it up after a storm, you just grab hold of one end and drag those vines right out to the snow pile outside town."

"Hey, how do you hear anything through a vine anyway?" says Hank.

"It's just a figure of-- sound travels quicker through foliage," says Brent. "Anyway, so what happened after the cuddling?"

~~~

The fiercest part of the storm lingered on top of them and it got progressively colder inside the cab of the truck. By the time it even started to clear up, Wanda was buried in the crook of Hank's arm, only the top of her head peeking out from the coat blanket. Hank was reluctant to say anything, except his toes had gone numb a while back and he was really looking forward to getting some sensation back into them.

"Looks like the wind's starting to go down," he said finally. "I'm starting to be able to see the road again."

Wanda immediately sat up and let her end of the coat fall on the seat between them, like she had never been there at all.

"Great," said Wanda. "That means we can get going now, right? We don't have to wait until you can see every tractor from here to Dog River?"

"Yeah, we can go now," said Hank. "Listen--"

"And we're never going to speak of this again, right?" she interrupted before he could even get half the question out.

"I guess, as long as no one asks."

"If you took a blow to the head, would you forget then?"

"Well, it's never worked before."

"Damn," she said, raising a wooden hairbrush from her purse behind him anyway.

~~~

"And that's how I got the lump on the back of my head," says Hank.

"So it was Wanda, in the pickup, with a hairbrush," says Brent. "Huh, my money was on Lacey, in the Ruby, with a skillet. I'm terrible at this game."

"Lacey?" says Hank. "It wasn't even Lacey's car I found out in the storm last night."

"Two nights ago."

"What?"

"The storm was two nights ago. And I didn't know it wasn't Lacey's car until you told me."

"And how would it be in the Ruby if I was stuck in a storm?"

"Never mind," says Brent, brushing sidewalk sand off his countertop.

"Well, whatever. Does Lacey even have a car?"

"Of course Lacey has a... wait, _does_ Lacey have a car? If she does, she's going somewhere else to get her gas."

Hank leans in across the counter. "She's not one of us, Brent."

"Who's not one of you?" says Lacey, stepping through the jingling door. "Wait, are you talking about me again? How long do I have to live here before you accept me as one of your own?"

"Just a little bit longer," says Wanda, following behind with a cup of coffee in one hand and a magazine in the other, only half an hour late for work. "Same as every other time you ask."

"Oh hey, Hank," says Lacey. "I heard you took a fall outside the post office. How're you feeling?"

"It was nothing," he says, chuckling nervously and giving Brent a sideways look. "Just a little ice from the storm."

"Ah," says Brent. "It was your innate sense of balance, at the post office, with concrete. I _never_ would've got that."

"Got what?" says Lacey.

"It's not a game!" says Hank. "It really happened!"

"Sure it did," says Brent. "Just like all those other things that happen in the magical place you go when you're sleeping. Hey Lacey, do you have a car?"

"Of course I have a car. You filled it up _yesterday_ , Brent."

"Oh yeah."

Wanda sits down with her coffee and her magazine and doesn't say a word.


End file.
